As much as I'd like polywell reactors to work, we must remember that extraordinary claims, such as cheap and economical fusion (from a field long written off by a lot of the mainstream physics community) requires extraordinary evidence. This evidence does not exist yet.
With this in mind, why must funding be an either/or for fusion?
Polywell has it's funding sorted by the US Navy, using the small number of the experts in this field that actually exist.
The physics community at large has high hopes for ITER, why not fund them and let them take their shot too?
How short and to the point. BBC on ITER.
Actually, much of the evidence does exist, it is just not available to us peasants.Gallium wrote:As much as I'd like polywell reactors to work, we must remember that extraordinary claims, such as cheap and economical fusion (from a field long written off by a lot of the mainstream physics community) requires extraordinary evidence. This evidence does not exist yet....
Certainly the confidence in the evidence is questionable, and some scaling questions may remain (unless Nebel and team have started getting results from WB8 already).
And then there are the engeenering questions...
Of course, this may also have been the attitude with Tokamaks in the 1960's.

Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.